In 2016, a monument to the female steel workers of South
Yorkshire, who had worked in the local factories and steel mills in
the World Wars was unveiled in Sheffield, England. Rooted firmly in
Sheffield’s industrial past and the national memory of the wars, the
monument began as an act of recognition of this group of working
women’s contributions to the war effort. It swiftly became more.
Since its unveiling, Women of Steel has been mobilized in multiple
acts of activism for such diverse causes as the ordination of women
in the Church of England, gender-based violence, and as a battle
ground for antagonistic views on what is denoted by the term
‘woman’. This mobilization is remarkable in the histories of gender,
place, commemoration, and activism for being conceived by activists as in alignment with, not antagonistic to the meanings of the
monument. This paper offers the first academic analysis of Women
of Steel, uncovering how and why a monument erected without
attendant controversy was swiftly adopted in activism for diverse
gendered causes. The paper explores the interplay between gender
and time, the denotation of design, and the associative connotations of the monument and the spaces it inhabits.